Heat waited for her to come up with her spiral pad. “And you were going to ask whether the trigger for the device was a timer or remote.”
“Timer,” she said without opening her notebook after all.
“Thank you.” Nikki posted that on the Tyler Wynn section, then rolled that board aside. As Raley and Rhymer wheeled the serial killer boards in to replace it, Heat gave her squad the details of the call from Rainbow and of the creeping of her bedroom. “The hard drive connected to the lipstick cam above my front door is gone, and my building super did not let anyone in.”
“Dude’s putting it in your face,” said Ochoa.
Detective Feller made a pistol of his fingers. “I’d like to put one in his.”
Moving things forward, Nikki said, “In case anyone hasn’t noticed, he didn’t kill me when he had ample opportunity. I say Rainbow is strongly motivated by his head games.”
“He’s competing. Wants to prove he’s smarter than the famous Detective Heat.” When Malcolm said that, alluding to her celebrity, Heat exchanged a short glance with Rook. “Probably gets off on it. If he outsmarts you…” The detective realized where that thought led and stopped there, finishing with a “Sorry.”
“No worries, Mal,” said Heat. “I think we all know the stakes.”
“And look how he’s just taunting you,” Detective Reynolds said, arching an indignant brow. “I mean even those mismatched socks on Joe Flynn? The odd socks?”
“Yeah, we all sort of got that. The price of having your life appear in print.” Nikki didn’t peek to Rook that time. She turned to Feller. “Randall, any idea yet how he managed to find out Joe Flynn had a connection to me?”
“Not yet. Working it, though.”
Raley said, “This Rainbow must be some kind of evil genius. I mean what sort of brainiac could make all those links from Conklin all the way to you?”
“I don’t think he did,” answered Rook.
“Uh, Mr. Pulitzer?” said Malcolm. “I believe the strings say otherwise.”
“It depends on what end you’re looking at, doesn’t it?” Rook moved to the Murder Boards. “Sometimes when I played Six Degrees of Marsha Mason, I’d cheat. I’m not proud of that, but I did. And when I cheated, know how I did? I didn’t pick a celebrity and work my way up to Marsha Mason. I started with Marsha Mason and worked backwards.” He paused and could see they were starting to follow. “Rainbow knew he wanted to match wits with Detective Heat all along, so he started with her and drew his links the other way.” To illustrate, he pointed at Nikki, then to each victim, but in reverse this time. “From Heat to Flynn to Bedbug Doug to Berkowitz and Conklin… it gets easier when you work backwards. By the time you get to Conklin, he’s almost a random choice.”
Rhymer said, “But not so random. Take a look. From Conklin to Flynn, every person on that board, without exception, is some kind of investigator. Restaurants, consumer watchdog, art recovery… This guy has a thing for targeting inspectors. Maybe to show he’s smarter.”
“That makes sense, homes, it does,” said Ochoa. “But I don’t care how smart he thinks he is. We keep digging, we’re going to find out where he fucked up and nail his ass.”
“I’ll tell you where he messed up,” said Heat. “Coming after me.”
After the squad broke up to jump on its assignments, Nikki quietly put in two calls: one to Bridgeport, Connecticut, the other to Providence, Rhode Island. The lead detectives in each department had the same reaction when she spoke to them. Chagrin that they had never put it together that the serial killer’s victims had been inspectors of various types. From insurance claims adjustors to an HR administrator who did background checks, they all fit the profile. The homicide detective in Providence said, “What’s this guy trying to do? Prove he can outsmart Sherlock Holmes?”
Captain Irons rolled in mid-morning from his weekly CompStat meeting down at 1PP. The CompStat sessions were an accountability ritual during which the city’s precinct commanders presented their crime statistics to NYPD commissioners, then got publicly maligned, cajoled, and scoffed at before their peers. As harrowing a process as it could be, the Iron Man came from administration, not the street, so Wally generally survived the Police Plaza gauntlet, because the game played to his only strength, looking good on paper.
Nikki watched him drop his briefcase and doff his coat, knowing it would be a matter of minutes before he saw the report of her night visit from Rainbow. She found Rook fridge surfing in the kitchenette and asked, “Want to take a ride to the coroner’s?”
He turned and grinned. “Shotgun.”
They crossed Central Park on the 81st Street transverse, only to endure the cross-town crunch. “Where are we with Puzzle Man?” she asked.
“Haven’t heard.”
“Shouldn’t you check in?”
“You don’t push Puzzle Man.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to find out,” said Rook. “Puzzle Man… he’s such an enigma.”
Shortly after Nikki cranked the turn south on Second Avenue, her phone rang and she popped in her earbud. “My DHS conference call,” she told Rook. “Be quiet and don’t make me laugh.”
“Heat? Bart Callan. We’re patching in Agent Bell.”
“I’m on,” said Yardley, sounding crisp, even for her.
Callan began, “This will be brief. Consider it a gentle heads-up for you about team protocol.”
Nikki felt her pulse elevate and wondered if she should pull over for this. “OK…”
“Vaja Nikoladze,” said Bell. “You were explicitly embargoed from contact and yet, what did you do? Made contact.”
“He called to complain. Now, we can call this a mulligan,” said Agent Callan, either trying to keep things from boiling over or to play Good Agent to her Bad Agent, who could tell? “Maybe you’re used to a structure that’s a little more elastic-”
“Oh, grow a pair and cut the shit, Bart,” snapped Yardley. “Heat, you are not, repeat not, to fly against a directive again. Once more, and we freeze you out like January in Adak. Clear? Good. I’m off this call.”
“Awkward,” said Agent Callan. “But don’t invest personally. Let’s just stay in step moving forward, all right?”
But Heat had already hung up. She flung her earpiece at the dashboard and seethed.
“Problem, Detective?” said Rook.
Nikki whipped her head to him. “Your girlfriend, Writer Boy.”
“Do I have to sit in your hallway with a shotgun all night?” asked Lauren Parry when Heat entered the little side office outside the autopsy room. “Because if you won’t get yourself a protection detail, that’s what I’m going to do.”
“I keep telling her, Doc,” added Rook as he slipped in.
Nikki said, “You talked to Miguel, didn’t you?”
“Damn straight I talked to Miguel. And the handsome and tasteful Detective Ochoa and I agree you are crazy for not getting some firepower on your back, girl. That’s because we have, what? Common sense.” Heat wondered if there existed a single space in all of Manhattan where she could find peace that morning. Dr. Parry must have read her stress level because she notched back the pitch. “All right then, I’ve had my say. Now let’s move on to a more pleasant subject, the new autopsy I did on Ari Weiss.” She pointed through the window into B-23, the basement autopsy room.
“He’s here?” asked Rook. “I’ve never seen an exhumed body. Can I see?” He didn’t wait for permission but rushed up to the glass.
Lauren smiled. “I’ve seen four-year-olds do this at the car wash, but that’s a first here.”
The supine corpse of a man occupied the nearest table. Rook turned back to the ME. “I was hoping for something more gross.”
“Then come back in fifty years. A body that’s been hermetically sealed in a good casket in a dry environment will be well preserved.”
“Even after eleven years?”
“Even after eleven years.”
“You’re no fun,” said Rook.
In contemplative silence Nikki stared through the window at the body of Tyler Wynn’s former associate. The man her mother had been grooming as an informant and who-much too coincidentally to suit Heat-died shortly after she did. “Have you got a confirmation of Weiss’s blood disorder?” she asked Lauren.